A reconstruction of how a single committee meeting changed the rules — and what the people in the room would later say happened.
It started with a memo. The kind that sits in an inbox for a week before anyone reads it. By the time the city solicitor flagged it, the language had already been pasted into a draft ordinance — and four signatures were needed to bring it to the floor.
In the days since, the question has shifted from how it happened to whether it should have. Three council members have called for a public review. Two have not. The mayor’s office has issued a statement that, in three carefully measured paragraphs, manages neither to defend the process nor to disavow the outcome.
What we know — and what we don’t
Reporters spent the past week reconstructing the timeline. Two staffers, granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, walked us through the chain of approvals. The picture they paint is not one of corruption, but of a process that moved faster than the public record could keep up with.
“The room was quiet, and the vote was over.”
A senior aide, recalling that Tuesday afternoon. There were six people in the room. Four of them were lobbyists. The other two were the council member who introduced the language, and her chief of staff. No one took minutes. The motion passed in under nine minutes.
The story will continue to develop. We’ll update this article as more comes in. If you have information you think we should know, please use our secure tip line.